Passage Illustrated

It was two or three months afterwards, when, one afternoon, an open
carriage stopped at the cricket field, just outside bounds, with a lady and gentleman in
it, who looked at the game a long time and stood up to see it played. Nobody thought much
about them, until the same little snivelling chap came in, against all rules, from the
post where he was Scout, and said, "It's Jane!" Both Elevens forgot the game directly,
and ran crowding round the carriage. It was Jane! In such a bonnet! And if
you'll believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.

It soon became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard at
it in the playground, to see a carriage at the low part of the wall
where it joins the high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up
in it, looking over. The gentleman was always Old Cheeseman, and
the lady was always Jane.

The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that way. There had
been a good many changes among our fellows then, and it had turned
out that Bob Tarter's father wasn't worth Millions! He wasn't worth
anything. Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old Cheeseman had
purchased his discharge. But that's not the carriage. The carriage
stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.

"So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!" said the lady,
laughing, as our fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her. "Are you
never going to do it?"

Commentary

In "Cheeseman's Marriage," the former social isolate and impoverished
Latin master returns to the school's playing fields in his own baroche, accompanied by
his new bride, Jane, the school's former seamstress. Although the illustration intimates
that the story's climax is the triumphant return of Old Cheeseman in style, in fact his
earlier appearance, shortly after he has received his inheritance, when he forgives his
tormentors is the true climax of "The Schoolboy's Story." Thus, although the illustration
telegraphs the rags-to-riches story line, Furniss once again misleads the reader into
classifying the piece as a romance.

Several months prior to the arrival of the fashionably dressed couple in the open
carriage, Dickens has the former Latin master confront the ringleaders of the conspiracy
against him and Jane Pitt in a climactic scene of benevolence and forgiveness. This scene
at the cricket pitch is not the climax, then, but the beginning of the dénoument,
in which the narrator, with no home to go to for the holidays, goes to the Cheesemans'.
To make the story conform to the expectations of the fin de siecle reader of
magazine romance, perhaps, Furniss implies by his captions and selections of subjects for
"The Schoolboy's Story" — Old Cheeseman's Only Friend
and Old Cheeseman's Marriage — that the story's climax
is the poor Latin master's marrying the school seamstress, whereas this second moment
realised in the Furniss sequence is a mere epilogue in the actual story.

The game in progress in the distance (upper centre) might as easily be rugby as
cricket, and the carriage is not terribly convincing, but Furniss has drafted the horses,
the sign of Old Cheeseman's having entered the monied class, effectively. Moreover, the
silk top hat worn by the carriage driver and his wife's millinery both imply their
new-found social status, for both were without hats of any kind in the previous plate.
The rest of the composition is highly impressionistic, but for the tree and fence (right)
which connect this composition structurally to the earlier illustration for the story,
Old Cheeseman's Only Friend, five pages earlier. The
playground has receded in dimensions as the boys who plagued the young master are reduced
in significance and power in the eyes of the narrator. The epilogue no longer concerns
the boys' mistrust of their former classmate; rather, the narrator, who now describes
himself as a "new boy" but tenuously connected to the seniors who have plagued Old
Cheeseman, becomes an intimate of the newly-rich family.

Scanned image and text by Philip V.
Allingham. [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or
educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document
to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in
a print one.]

References

Davis, Paul. Charles Dickens A to Z: The Essential
Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998.